The Forever Kind
by daphno
Summary: *SECOND TO LAST CHAPTER IS UP!* Chris may be a hero, but he's also a father. Sometimes he's both. Also, somebody decides to rebuilt Raccoon City. Future fic, set circa 2018. Wow, I suck at summaries, but seriously: read this, it's actually quite good :D Major Chris/Jill with Claire/Leon coming into play later on.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is part of an on-going fic which will eventually fill all parts of my hc_bingo card LJ.**

**The story is set a few years in the future (approx. 6), and Chris and Jill are in a long-standing relationship with a daughter. In this story, the government has decided to rebuilt Raccoon City, and the story focuses on Chris, Jill, Claire and Leon's journey.  
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**Warnings for this section: non-explicit mentions of rape/non-con. In this fic, I assume that there was something more sinister between Wesker and Jill while she was under his control, so be aware of that before you start reading. Also, sexytiems, but not graphic, only implied.  
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**Everything out of the way? Let's go.  
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It's years after the end of it all that Chris learns to let it go. Emma is four, nearly five. The B.S.A.A are disbanded, cautiously, and they all learn to breathe a little easier. After all, what is there left to fight?

Chris learns to cut the crusts off sandwiches and starts to live his life in little moments, sees everything through preschooler eyes as his daughter begins to comprehend the world. He dreads the day that she'll start asking questions. When she was born he swore he'd never touch a gun again, and it grew dust in the safe, but he still unlocks it sometimes and looks, just to check he hasn't forgot what it means.

He never wants to forget how to fight, the rough mess of blood and sweat, and grit, and gun oil. He wants to keep Emma as far from this darkness as he can, but it's a part of him, of Jill. It is woven into the kith of their life, every moment of easy domesticity is backlit by combat, by a fallen comrade, by Wesker and his poison hands. Every lazy weekend is a celebration of how close they came to being something else entirely, every kiss as secret as their first.

He tells himself he ought to be proud that they survived, that he even has a family, but in the middle of his chest is a cold pocket of grief and panic he keeps bottled up for a rainy day. _Claire could have died... Jill nearly did..._ They were all so constantly on the edge of danger, threat after threat, that adjusting to life in relative safety is alien to him. He watches the neighbours for signs of suspicion. He did a background check on Emma's preschool teacher. He can't let it go, not for one second. This is unfamiliar ground to him; now, he knows new fear.

At night, he kisses his way around the scars on Jill's body. There's something nourishing in the easy fact of losing himself in her skin, of the clumsy mash of teeth on teeth, that grounds him, keeps him from shooting things.

"Loveyouloveyouloveyou," he moves his lips on her collarbone, and all at once they're grubby S.T.A.R.S kids again, stealing looks over their desks. _This is stupid, crazy_, he'd thought, back then as he fell in love way too hard, _I barely even know her_.

Hollywood movies had forgot to tell him how grisly love was, how raw and singularly scary. He'd called Claire once, a few weeks before the Mansion Incident, and asked for advice. His kid sister had laughed, it was easy to forget she was only eighteen.

"Don't be silly Chris," she'd said down the phone, "how many girls do you fall for, on average, a week? You'll be in love with someone else next week."

She had a point. But this was different; this was Jill. Even now, he's still in awe of his feelings for her. He loves her in the forever kind of way in which he loves Emma, and Claire, but with Jill there is more, always more.

He sucks her toes in quick succession. He unzips and unwraps and worships her. He kisses her raw until Wesker's fingerprints are wiped off her body. He listens to her talk about Wesker, and those insane years. She tells it with jarring clarity, recalls with grim precision the way he brought her back to life, traced each of her veins around her naked body, placed skeletal hands on her with cool detachment.

It took losing her to Wesker for Chris to want her, really want her, in that forever way. He just couldn't wait. After Africa, when they were finally on U.S soil, he had gathered her up in his arms, blonde hair and scars and all, and said with his eyes _tell me. _"Did he touch you?"

She told him. She told him everything. The tests, the surgeries, the P-30 and how it pushed its way through her body, pumping towards her heart. Wesker and his eyes that told her a thousand horror stories, and the way he would nurture and tease and push and lick, until she curled on her side and begged for emptiness and _oh god._

He buried his face in her neck, breathed in, breathed out. She still smelt of the sterile hospital and of that vaguely gritty type of sand they had in Africa. He'd pulled off her standard B.S.A.A issue windbreaker, helped her out of her slacks, plucked off her socks and her underwear, taken her by the hand into the hotel bathroom. She was compliant and cold, tears drying on her cheeks.

"Trust me," he said, and she did.

She hadn't had a shower in three years. Living in a sterile testing chamber, there wasn't much need for washing. And later, Wesker had preferred her unwashed, grimy and dirty and chained.

Chris turned the water on, way too hot and way too rough. He scrubbed her knees, her palms, washed her hair until he was sure the hot water could strip the blond dye. It didn't. She stood in silence, thinking of Wesker's hands all over her. Chris was washing her with the vague determination in which people scrub door handles in a new house. It was the first time he'd seen her naked, but she wasn't thinking about that. His hands were chaste as he washed her, and tears of anger near blinded him as he worked.

Later, when Jill was dressed in a puffy bathrobe from the hotel's concierge desk, they lay cramped in the single twin bed. Chris had his arms round her, still, and refused to let go. She clung to him, her lifeline.

"You can go home soon," he said. The hospital in D.C had discharged her, and she was free to go whenever she liked. The hotel had been Josh's idea. Chris had to remember to thank him.

"Go where?"

She had a point. After three years, her landlord had closed the tenancy. Claire had boxed up her stuff one weekend, and was loyally paying the fees. Her former apartment was now occupied by a group of young students.

He knew he should offer to let her move in with him, but his apartment was sparse and tiny, and messy beyond belief. It also only had one room. He knew he shouldn't presume that Jill would want to share, and yet _don'tleavemedon'tleavemenotnow. _

The next day, she appeared on his doorstep, backpack in hand and a sad smile on her face. "I didn't know where else to go," she said, and he was surprised that she actually felt the need to ask permission to enter his house. He held out his arms for her, and she had stayed there ever since.

It took her weeks to stop crying, months to stop flinching every time he accidentally touched her at night. He would wake sometimes to find her at the kitchen table, gasping and gulping down painkillers.

"Another bad dream?" He would ask, and she would nod. She woke up with a panic attack most nights, clawing at her own skin until she got out of bed for a walk. He would find her pacing around the tiny confines of his apartment, muttering under her breath.

He sat beside her. He watched as she got her body under control, slowing her breathing. He had never once witnessed a panic attack before Jill's. He had never seen the clutch of terror and loss of control as her body spiraled into panic mode, the ghoulish way that she would fret and shake until he was sure the P30 was taking her over again.

He learned to work with her, placing his hand on her back, rubbing in small, comforting circles. She allowed this contact without tensing up, but anything more would send her back into the heights of another attack.

"Chris," she would sob into his side, "what's happening to me?"

And it burnt him raw to hear it, and to know that what had already happened was something he could never fix, no matter how many nights he spent sleepless by her side, no matter how much she told him about Wesker's abuse, it was all done and dusted.

"I can't think," she said, "can't do anything. What if he comes back?"

Chris didn't need to tell her what he'd do to Wesker if he saw him again, if by some hellish stunt he'd managed to survive those missiles that he and Sheva had pumped into his body, as revenge for the caustic way he'd taken Jill. Chris felt the anger bubbling up just at the thought of Wesker surviving, an anger that was constantly just beneath the surface.

"I won't let him," Chris whispered, breathing out steam into the cold midnight air of his kitchen. "I wouldn't." _I'd tear him up with my bare hands, I'd break him into a thousand pieces._

She looked at him, and sighed. "Don't leave me," she said quietly, "please." As if she even had to ask…

And that was it. He reached for her, pulled her into his arms. _The perfect fit. _Everything became a mess of tears and tongues getting in the way as he held her as tight as possible. "I won't, I won't," he chanted between kisses, and somehow they made it into the bedroom.

She flinched away from him, but he was steady. He touched her face, made her look into his eyes. "I won't hurt you Jill, ever. _You know I won't._" And they had made their way from there without words, with only rhythmic kissing and iloveyou's breathed out in quick succession. She tasted like smoke, like everything he'd ever imagined. She was quiet as they rocked on the bed. _Ohmygod, _he sucked on her wrist in awe, _this is finally happening._

After they'd drank one another dry, she fell asleep with her face pressed against his chest. His mind was running a thousand miles a minute, thinking about Raccoon City, about the Spencer Estate, about the dumb way in which Jessica had fawned over him, and he hadn't even noticed, because Jill, always Jill, he was looking for her on that goddamned ship, vectoring towards her, always.

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**Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think? :)**

**Chapter two will be up in a few minutes xx  
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	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Hi again! Back with another chapter. This one has some cute Emma scenes, as well as Chris's retrospective thoughts on the Raccoon City incident... No warnings, except the usual RE warnings of zombies and trauma :P**

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Emma is four, nearly five. She comes to him with a hand covering her mouth, fat tears on her cheek.

"Daddy. Ouch." She looks at him as though he can cure her of anything. Even toothache.

He sits her on his knee. He's at the computer, typing up a report. These days he works for the regular police, though he took a desk job out of fear of what seeing more crime would do to his mental state. The computer whirs and hums as he does his best to comfort his daughter.

"My tooth, look." She yanks open her mouth, blinks at him. He can see the offending incisor, hanging off by a mere bloody thread of tissue. All the gory things he's seen, and he still feels his stomach churn while he looks at that bloody tooth.

"A brave little girl would let me pull it out," he says matter-of-factly, but Emma was downright stubborn: no one was going near that tooth.

"Nuh-uh," she says to prove as much. "Daddy, is the tooth fairy real?"

"As real as your or I," he lies. Jill said she'd never believed in the tooth fairy, her dad hadn't cared for filling her head with nonsense. Claire had believed up until she'd started junior high, which Chris promised to never let her forget.

"Good," says Emma, reassured. "Mommy says I get ten whole dollars."

Chris laughed. "I bet mommy said no such thing. And anyway, you gotta lose it to earn it, kiddo."

He remembers back to when he lost his first tooth. Claire was a brand new baby, and he'd been left alone in the playroom while the adults fussed over the infant. She was all pink skin and noisy cries, and he was bored of her. He had been throwing a baseball back and forth in the tiny room, bouncing it off the wall, when it shot back and hit him in the mouth. His tooth hadn't even been wobbly, but it fell out with a shooting pain and a lot of blood. His only real memory from that time was the sense of pride he felt that adults were finally paying attention to him.

Emma tweaks her tooth experimentally. It doesn't budge. He remembers when her teeth were growing in, the mind-numbing exhaustion of holding a baby that wouldn't stop crying, pacing four square walls. The pain and effort they'd all gone through to get this set of teeth, only for them to fall out a few years later.

He lost plenty of teeth along the years, so many that he was thankful the B.S.A.A offered a good dental plan. Knocked out in fist fights, caught on the butts of guns, shattered as his head hit the floor, so many teeth spat out in a bloody mix of saliva, he marvelled that he had any teeth left at all.

"Okay daddy, I'm ready," Emma announces, "you can get it."

"Really?" He asks, and she nods, eyes wide. He reaches in to her mouth, takes hold of the wobbly incisor. "One, two-" And he pulls.

A few years after Africa, before Emma was born, Chris heard news that the government had plans to rebuild Raccoon City. It didn't surprise him, considering the legacy surrounding the place. The truth was out now, and people flocked to it like sheep. Mourning lost loved ones, agonising over Umbrella's cruelty, people treated the city like a touchstone. The city itself stood blackened and empty, like bare bones left to dry out.

When Jill heard the news, she had been shocked, and more than a little anxious.

"I know you went back," said Chris. They were in bed, reading the paper, which was where they had seen the announcement.

"Yeah," she said, distant.

He had heard from Rebecca about Jill's return to Raccoon City, and the events that had taken place, with Brad and the demonic Nemesis. Jill herself had been too shaken up to tell him. It scarred her, to see the dead come back to life. Even now, zombie-free, it pained her to think of those crazy days.

He remembers the Mansion Incident, the way in which everyone was surprised they survived. He remembers it in flaky black-and-white, like it happened to somebody else. Jill and Chris, clean from the war, dumb stuck in the parking lot the Monday after, marvelling that life still went on. Rebecca in the hall, shaking over coffee, still wearing her clothes from the weekend, Billy's dog tags clinging to her neck. _The night we nearly died_, thought Chris as the pair of them walked into RPD headquarters, soldiers in a secret war. They passed Barry, who averted his eyes at the last moment. _Damn it Barry_, Chris remembered saying that night, _damn you to hell_. He hadn't processed Barry's base betrayal (hadn't processed any of it, clinging to Jill in the black of night, scared to sleep), he was in that stage of being incredibly pissed off that he hadn't seen it coming.

None of them had. He blinked, and they were at Rebecca's place. She had a tiny apartment in downtown RC, one room and a tiny bathroom, and they sat on the sofa while she showered. They heard her crying, and listened in silence. That's the way things were back then, crying in the dark and facing monsters alone. Jill took Chris's hand, and he wondered where Wesker was, if he was seeing what they saw when they closed their eyes.

They entered a house of mysteries, and the dead came back to life. Chris still had bites on his neck, his legs, patched up at Becky's inexpert hands. The virus still ticked though Jill's body, like a B-movie subcutaneous infection burning when she walked. The trauma made his head foggy, and on occasions he forgot where he was. They hadn't spent a moment apart, but he knew she was itching for a fight, for action, to shoot the hell out of something, anything.

Chris knew that what it comes down to know was _us or them_, rough and ready, just a gun and teeth and blood between them and a monster. He was ready for battle, for life or death, to throw it all away to make Wesker pay.

Even now, he's still living on the edge of panic, waiting for the call.

"Are we going?" She says, weeks later. "To Raccoon City, when it opens again?" There had been another announcement in the regional paper that it was opening up to the public in a month or so, after years of development. They hadn't managed to persuade people to actually live there, so the town was being kept as a sort of large-scale museum, replicated down to the tiniest object.

He's not quite sure what to say. "I think maybe we ought to." He says it quietly, well aware that he's treading on dangerous ground. Even now, eleven years after the fact, Jill is still standing on the edge of freaking out about it.

Between them is a tub of ice cream, Rocky Road at Jill's request. They are sitting on the sofa late at night, and Emma is lying across them fast asleep, her head against Jill's stomach, her feet curled on Chris's lap.

"We don't owe anything to that place, Chris," says Jill, shoving a huge spoonful of ice cream into her mouth. After the Mansion Incident, after particularly tough missions with the B.S.A.A, they'd always had ice cream.

"I know," he chomps thoughtfully on a chunk of chocolate, "but I'd feel weird, knowing that the place was rebuilt but that we hadn't seen it. If anyone needs to see it, it's us."

"Maybe you," she knots her hands in Emma's soft hair. The girl has had a crushy head of dark velvet hair ever since birth, but Claire is still holding out for another redhead in the family. "I don't need to go back, Chris, I just… I want to pretend the place never existed, you know?"

He doesn't know. He's been fascinated by stories of Raccoon City ever since, possibly because he's never quite forgiven himself for not being there. On the anniversary every year, he sits and talks with Claire about the horrors, the mysteries, about Leon and Sherry and the sheer masses of zombies.

"Maybe you could go, alone," Jill says tentatively, "or take Claire with you. I'm sure she'd like to go back." Chris nods, he's more than sure that Claire would like to visit Raccoon City. She talks about it often. He knows that they both feel an amniotic pull to it like a burn. He wonders half-heartedly if they could persuade Leon to go; Leon who they so very rarely see these days, Leon who is Emma's legal godfather and yet who hasn't seen her since she was eighteen months old.

"I'll think about it," he says, and means it. Claire is due for her monthly visit home from India tomorrow, so he makes a plan to bring it up then.

Jill makes a vague noise of assent and loads her spoon with ice cream, guiding it towards Chris's mouth with a laugh. "Bottoms up, Redfield."

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**Thanks for reading! Reviews will make me write part 3 faster, because I'm thinking of taking a break but if anyone likes this let me know and I'll get the next chapter done quicker :) xx**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Hey guys, back again :) thanks for your lovely reviews on the first 2 chapters, you're too nice :) **

**Like I said before, I'm writing this fic for a challenge, and it will eventually be about 15,000 words long :) hope you all know what you're letting yourselves in for :P  
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**x  
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**(Also: vague sexual content in this chapter. I might have to change the rating, what do you think?)  
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In Jill's early days on the force, she had seen more than her fair share of hazing. Joseph and the others would place joke chickens on her desk, and replace sugar pots with salt, and leave stray cables where she might trip over them. In the office, they would target her most obvious weakness: she was the only girl in a workplace dominated by rough 'n' tough guys.

Chris stood on the side-lines. He himself had been hazed at first, and he felt an awkward sort of solidarity with Jill, before Emma, before the Mansion Incident, before they were even friends. He would go out of his way to disable any booby traps before she embarrassed herself.

They were out practising shooting one day. It was hot, possibly summertime, and Chris was getting tired of missing the target. Most of the S.T.A.R.S members stood in a line facing target papers, and Wesker marched between them barking orders like a general. Jill was getting more and more frustrated that her gun kept blanking out on her, and she was the only person that didn't know that the guys had replaced her bullets with duds. Chis felt guilty just watching her struggle.

"Dammit girl," snapped Wesker, coming up behind her, pinning her arms to her sides to prevent her from attempting to shoot the gun, "you're not doing much to dispel the myth about women in the workplace." He laughed at her, which was something he was good at doing, and the other guys joined in. Chris noticed that Brad had a particular glint in his eye, and deduced that this had been his idea.

Jill shrugged Wesker off, threw the gun on the floor and rounded on Brad. Out of nowhere she had pulled her combat knife, and pressed it flush against his neck.

"Hey Chickenheart," she whispered against his ear, "wanna play?"

The others were on her in an instant, and Chris stepped in to grab hold of her before Wesker could reach her. Brad looked pale, shook up. Wesker yelled at them to get back to work, and shot a look at Jill. It was a blazing, angry look, but he winked at her all the same.

"Lemmie go, Redfield," Jill said, and he complied.

"That was insane," he said, impressed, "what did you go and do that for?"

"He was grating my nerves. Brad. What an idiot. Did he think I was going to stand for that much longer?" She was getting little bites of red in her cheeks from anger.

Chris laughed, "I don't think he expected anything like that."

From then on, the hazing mysteriously stopped, and everyone gave Jill a wide berth. As time went by the story got grossly exaggerated until eventually Jill had cart wheeled over to Brad and put him in a half-nelson.

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It is midday, and Claire's plane has just touched down at the airport. Chris is there to meet her, and when he catches sight of her he throws his arms around her with a big sigh of relief. He'll never tell her, but it worries him that she lives on the other side of the world.

"Hey Chris, you big goof," she says, messing up his hair. She's thinner than when he saw her last, and much more tanned; her red hair clashes with her dark skin. It reminds him of when they were kids, and stayed out too long in the sun.

"I missed you," he says earnestly, pulling her back towards him. Zombies and BOWs and a thousand near-misses, and she is still his baby sister.

"I missed _you_," she grins, "and you," she says to Emma, bending down and covering the little girl's body in a massive hug. She has always been great with children.

"So," he says conversationally as he takes hold of her luggage and they begin walking towards the exit, "have you spoken to Leon recently?"

"Well yes, and no," she says with some hesitancy, swinging Emma up onto her hip. "I called him from India, to let him know I was coming home."

"And?"

"He's ignoring me. He won't return my calls." Her face is sad, downtrodden. Chris knows that she's been having trouble with Leon lately, ever since the news of Raccoon City's reopening was announced. He'd distanced himself from all of them, but it hurt Claire the most. "I'm worried about him, Chris, really worried."

Chris only nods. Getting in contact with Leon is easier said than done these days. Everyone says he never really came back from the dead, not after China. He has taken to keeping low, keeping quiet, living next to rats and gangs, and drunk calling Sherry at ungodly hours. He's a mess. They all are.

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He'd thought she was dead, once. Really dead, the forever kind. He went to her funeral and cried for her and mourned her. He'd done the grieving widower thing, the out-of-control drinking. He'd moved in with his sister and nearly lost his job, and then he got over it. Got back on track. Went to Africa and found her there, a stranger, a killer. He'd kissed her clean and lost himself all over again.

"Y'know," he tells her, underneath the covers breathing hot air out, "this is crazy."

She nods. She's biting down on a pillow so Emma can't hear them, and this is crazy, even now when things are supposed to be clear he's lost in the madness.

He still calls her Valentine, sometimes.

Even when they're making love he keeps a loosely possessive grip on her arms. He leaves bruises. _Don't leave me_, he begs with his tragic lost-boy eyes, _don't go, not again._

He thinks she's an angel, or something thereabouts. He never forgets the way she made him feel the loss of her like a fatal wound.

(So many bodies, lining the street. Rebecca playing the piano all wrong. Jill standing by his side with her ridiculous shoulder pads and her army-brat haircut.)

He never believed in God before she came falling back down to him. He bites down on her shoulder, and he knows that it hurts her, knows she'll complain about it later, but he loves the mark he leaves on her skin. Ownership. He loves her, inside out. All's fair in love and war. He bites harder.

(_Baby, don't go_.)

Once, in that crazy mansion, he'd felt dizzy, swaying like lightning had struck him. He felt invincible, he felt buzzed to be alive and killing the undead. He'd almost kissed her, right there and then, in the middle of a viral outbreak. Idiot.

He missed himself more than he missed her. He missed the person he was around her. He missed midnight snacking and S.T.A.R.S reminiscing, he missed their weekend pyjama days and that spooky, cognitive way in which they would lift their guns in unison. He missed her delicious face and the feel of her sleeping beside him, just friends, just partners, just the two of them against the world, a clannish pair of no-good outlaws who always got assigned to one another because that was how it ought to be. _Oh Valentine and Redfield? They go way back_.

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One day she was sick, a few years after Africa. Sick to the bottom of her stomach, leaning over the toilet and sobbing. Though the P30 was flushed from her system long ago, Chris stood by the bathroom door, anxious.

"Jill, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she called, and vomited.

"Not true," he countered. "Healthy young women don't get sick for no reason."

"Chris, just –" a lengthy pause, in which she vomited, and he heard the tap run for a second as she poured a glass of water. "Leave me alone," she concluded, "please."

He feet pained to hear her in pain, useless. "At least let me hold your hair?" It was terribly cliché, but he leant against the locked door begging for inclusion.

It was silent for a moment, and then she unlocked the door. Fraction by fraction, the door opened to reveal her pale, white-washed face. She was shivering.

"Oh Jill," he said, overwhelmed, "oh babe."

"Calm down," she pushed past him, headed for their bedroom (he's never got over that: their room, their bed, their life) to fetch a towel.

"I'll get that for you," he hurried to catch up with her, and she rounded on him.

"Just stop it Chris, back off." He could tell she was upset, but it wounded him all the same.

He took a step back. "Are you sick? Is it the T Virus?" He remembered Jill as she used to be, young and fun, not this post-Africa virulent hybrid archetype.

She looked shocked for a moment, like maybe it was the T Virus after all. She shook her head. "No."

"Well then, what?"

She looked at him through tired eyes, as though telling him the truth was the last thing she wanted to do. He was worried, now more so than ever. She'd been wound up for weeks, snapping at him over the tiniest thing, bundling herself away at the back of the house, staring at the garden for hours on end. She hadn't been eating properly, and what little she consumed she threw right back up again.

(In Russia they went hungry for days, got cold beyond belief and had to burn books for warmth. She'd had an odd rejection to burning books, even the Soviet propaganda books they'd found in their cabin. "Literature is important Christopher," she said as they sipped noodles and tea, "the decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation." Trust her to read van Goethe.)

He wondered what she could be hiding from him, after all these years. He thought briefly of her smoking. She had picked up the habit after Africa, and it bothered him to see her puff poison in and out of her body like an idling stock car. He would hate to lose her to cancer this late in the game.

"If you don't tell me, I'll assume the worst." Hell, he already was.

She began to pace, like a caged tigress, and she glared at him out the corner of her eyes, weighing him up as though she planned to eat him. "Fine," she sighed at last, "I'm pregnant."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Once again, thank you all so much for your lovely reviews! I'm glad you all enjoy reading this fic as much as I enjoy writing it :)**

**xx  
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**(p.s: This chapter includes badass Sherry :D)  
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The pregnancy was terrible. They both had nightmares of Africa, and skeletal white hands, and monsters in the dark. Chris took to walking in front of her just to see what was coming, peering into the eyes of strangers for tell-tale rictus pupils of the terminally infected. For the first time in years, he carried a gun.

"Listen to me Chris," she said one night, when they were both awake with the terror. It was nearly dawn, and jackdaws were gathering on the washing line. He tasted the panic in the back of his throat, dull mercuric tang to match the thumping of his heart.

"If you have to choose who to save, me or the baby –"

"-Jill."

"Just _listen._ Say you have to, for whatever reason, you have to choose. You've got to save the baby Chris."

He nodded, but it was unthinkable. He wanted to dig a hole in the ground and bury them both. He imagined the baby, just a reptilian fetus humming along to Jill's pulse, he imagined little fingers and toes drumming on her stomach, a tiny face with Jill's nose. _Oh god, he hoped it had her nose_. And her eyes, and her brains, and her jar-head way of getting everything right.

He imagined Wesker with his hands on Jill, on their child, on Claire, on little Sherry, and he wished he could start digging that hole right now. What kind of life would their baby have, in a world where men take what they want, and to hell with everybody else? What kind of person would knowingly bring new life into the hell that had been their life for the past fifteen years?

At the scan, neither of them could hold still. The ultrasound tech had to place a firm hand on Jill's shoulder.

"Calm down Ms. Valentine," she said, "this scan can only go one of two ways."

She was right, but Chris found himself anxious all the same. _As long as it's healthy, I don't care about the sex, I don't care._ But he did. He wanted a son, and a daughter, a dozen of each, all brought up in a nice house somewhere with a big garden. He wanted Claire to visit every day, but more than anything he wanted them all to be healthy.

"Chris?" Said Jill, laughing.

He looked up. The screen was showing a dancing shadow of the human form, all miniature and scaled down. The legs were twitching in two-time to what he imagined was Jill's own movements.

"It's a girl," the tech said, as if he could miss it. He didn't. He wondered how he hadn't seen it before; this little bundle of white bones and moving organs was his daughter.

"How about a name?" Jill said, back at the house. They were sat on the floor of the nursery, a crib lying unfinished in the middle of the room. He placed his hand on her stomach; _this is madness. Any minute now I'll wake up and this'll be just another one of Wesker's plans, and Claire will be coming to rescue my sorry ass. Any minute now, I'll wake up._

But he didn't.

Jill was flicking through a name book. "Leona?" She said, laughing.

"Imagine that," said Chris.

"We need to call her something," said Jill, insistent, "we can't just keep calling her Baby, cute though that is."

He begged to differ. Naming this kid was harder than fighting off a horde of zombies, he oughta know.

* * *

Since Emma was born, he's had flashbacks of the Mansion Incident in increasing number.

He'll blink, and then he's cowering with Rebecca by Richard's side, knocking heads with Jill as they shot monsters back to back, the earthly feel of her breathing keeping him sane. It was pistols at dawn, and the zombies kept coming. He remembers Rockfort Island, adrenaline pumping through his veins, drunk with excitement, saving the world with his baby sister. He remembers flying away in that cramped airplane, the two of them squashed together, watching Wesker step from the destruction below. He remembers Steve, and Ada; Sherry Birkin clinging to Claire's arms. He recalls Sherry now, all grown up and full of vengeance.

His body holds a memory of all the battles; every scar tells a story. The pinpricks on his arms where Rebecca had injected him with serum, Tyrant-shaped scratch marks on his chest, teeth marks skirting up his legs, the broken bones in his wrists that have never quite set right.

Pumping bullets into the reanimated bodies of the recently deceased was what had made him feel most alive. The rush of blood to his heart, warming his whole body as he ducked and reloaded, inches from death, it was what he used to live for. He'd never processed it while it was happening, it was all still too close to the skin, unprocessed and sitting in the forefront of his brain, ready to be used as ammo. It was all just knives and punches and shotgun shells.

"Chris?" Says Claire, cutting through his thoughts. They are sitting cross legged on the lawn, watching over Emma who is tottering around on her bike.

He looks across at her. _You'd never guess she was a hero_, he thinks, _she's still so young_. "I was just thinking about the way things used to be, before."

She nods. 'Before' is the way in which they refer to Raccoon City without alerting Emma. He dreads the day she starts asking questions.

"I feel like a whole different person now," Claire says, "it's strange. It's been years since I even picked up a gun."

Chris thinks of his Wesson, sleeping in the safe, and remembers the precise sound of the chamber clicking against his ear, the feel of the bullets powering out, the almighty silence and then the sound of his own pulse. Claire preferred her knives, but Chris found them messy, hard to aim, good for a desperate situation, but nothing compared to the clumsy feel of an oiled gun in his hands.

"Heard any more news about Raccoon City yet?" Chris asks.

She nods. TerraSave are vaguely overseeing the grand reopening, and have appointed Claire their go-to spokesperson. Chris assumes they like the grande feel of having a Raccoon City survivor working for them. "I think they're aiming for some time in mid-July," says Claire, "if everything goes to plan."

Chris feels a chill go through his bones. July? "Twenty years, to the day," he says, and can't really believe it.

For a minute there he almost loses it, curls his head against Claire's knees and gives up, but then Emma thunders up to them, tossing her bike down and forcing her way onto his lap, and suddenly he can't remember Raccoon City at all.

"So I'm thinking we should drive there early in the morning," says Claire, politely ignoring his teary eyes.

He nods. "You think Sherry will want to come?"

"Probably not, but I'll ask her anyway." For a second he flashes back to a little girl with a pink ribbon in her hair, smelling of sweat and tears and blood, wearing his sister's motorcycle jacket. She's an orphan and a hybrid.

"And Leon?"

Claire hesitates. "I – I haven't spoken to him. Still. He's still chasing after Ada."

Chris recalls the time he held a gun to Ada, and Leon knocked him down. "Where are they now?"

"I don't know. Japan, maybe? I've given up trying to reason with him."

Once, Chris had called Leon Ada's puppy, _"you'd follow her to the end of the world if she asked." _Nobody was surprised when the pair of them took off into the wilderness, chasing one another back and forth. The matter in China had never fully been resolved, and after the dissolution of the B.S.A.A, Ada still had to be held accountable for her actions.

* * *

Days later, Chris is sat with Sherry in his kitchen. They are working their way through a party bag of Oreos, and somewhere under the table Emma is playing with toy cars.

"So Claire says we're driving to Raccoon City pretty early?"

He narrows his eyes at her, critical. "And you're… okay with that?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I just thought…"

"No," says Sherry, "I want to go back. I think I have to, you know?"

He knows. He remembers the first time she came to his house, sixteen years old and kicked out of yet another home. After they were satisfied that she didn't pose a further risk to the general population, the government had surrendered her to local children's authorities. She was tough on foster families, and didn't fit well into any home. Within months, she was a hopeless case, living somewhere different from one week to the next. At sixteen, she'd moved in with Chris and Jill.

There had been obstacles. Sherry was obstinate, pig-headed and angry at everyone. Raccoon City hung in front of her like a constant nightmare, and she never let any of them forget it.

"I don't need therapy," she'd snapped at him when he'd suggested it. Even four years on, she'd still had shadows beneath her eyes. He knew she was itching for action, for revenge, for the chance to get out there and kill someone.

"Therapy," a doctor once told him shortly after the Mansion Incident, "comes in many forms."

So he took Sherry to a shooting range.

"We don't normally allow minors," the attended had complained, looking at Sherry. She was underweight and tiny and still too pale. Chris flashed his B.S.A.A id, and the attended had hesitantly agreed.

He placed a gun in her hands. "Rule number one: never take your eye off the target."

She slapped the ear protectors in place and took aim at the sheet of paper hanging on a conveyer belt at the far end of the range. A target circle was painted on in black, and she half-closed one eye.

Chris laughed. He turned her sideways and corrected her arms. "You shoot a gun like that, kiddo, and you'll tire out in minutes."

Sherry frowned. He knew she was trying her hardest. He knew she was remembering Raccoon City, and the effortless way in which Claire had transitioned from ordinary citizen to gun-toting biker babe. It was important to her, this stage of martialization; like Chris, she needed to feel armed against the world.

He patted her shoulder uselessly. "Not everyone gets it right the first time. Hold up the gun." She obeyed, and pointed it shakily towards the target. He could see it was almost too heavy for her. He imagined her four years younger and helpless against a crowd of monsters. "Take a deep breath in, and don't breathe out 'til you've pulled the trigger. And watch for the recoil." She adjusted the pistol against her shoulder, tucked her hair behind her ear and breathed deep.

It felt like he waited hours until she released the bullet. The sound shocked them both, and Sherry gasped and nearly dropped the gun, hopping around from one foot to the other. He wasn't surprised that she missed.

"Oh, who am I kidding?" She yelled at him, her ears still ringing from the shot. "I'm not cut out for this. I'm zombie bait, remember."

"Try this." He moved to the side, and fiddled with the switch that allowed the paper target to be reeled in at the end of the session. He set it to medium speed, and together they watched as the little painted target got closer and closer. And closer.

"Now would be a good time to aim, Sherry."

She gulped, and raised the gun. The paper got even closer, so that now they could see the tiny little circle in the center, with a little note beside it: '100 points'.

"Zombies are coming, Sherry, shoot or die." He felt energized just saying it, imagining a crowd of monsters tripping over each other as they hungered for flesh.

The paper got close enough that Chris could have reached out and unclipped it, if he'd wanted to. It almost reached the end of the conveyer belt when Sherry whipped the gun up at the last moment and squeezed the trigger for dear life.

This time, she really did drop the gun. "Oh my god," she half sobbed, half laughed, "that was intense!"

Chris picked the gun up gingerly, and grinned at his student. He unclipped the sheet of paper and handed it to her, giving her a one-armed hug.

"Not bad for zombie bait," he said, pointing out her bullet hole in the dead center of the target. 100 points, dead on.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: once again, thank you all so so much for your reviews and continued kind words 3 you're all too lovely!**

**x  
**

* * *

Monday morning he watches Emma and Claire leave for preschool.

"Why can't mommy take me?" She says in her small voice, leaning her forehead against his as he buttons her coat.

"Mommy's tired. And anyway, isn't it more fun if Aunt Claire takes you?"

Emma seems to get the hint, because she smiles and lets him kiss her nose before taking Claire's hand. Claire is distracted, a million miles away.

"I'll see you later," she says, barely looking at him, and Emma waves goodbye as they step out into the July gusts together.

"Bye," he says, and watches them go. Claire is always on edge on the anniversary of the Raccoon City incident, and Jill is always sick to her stomach.

After watching Claire and Emma walk down the street, he visits Jill in bed. He sits beside her curled body and watches the comforter rise and fall as she tries to pretend to be asleep.

"Do you want some toast?" He tries, not really hopeful that she will eat something.

She grunts non-committedly. "How was she?"

"Fine. Claire will take care of her. Are you sure you don't want breakfast?"

"Twenty years, Chris," she says, and her voice is muffled under the covers. It sounds like she's rasping at him underwater, like that time on the Queen Zenobia, when all hell broke loose and he felt his lungs burning with the underwater pressure. He remembers how young they used to be, and can't believe it. He still hears the pulse of sonar in the back of his mind, sometimes.

She whips the covers back, and looks at him. Her face is flushed. "I think I should call Carlos." She looks around for her cell phone in the mess of covers.

"Good idea," says Chris, finding the phone and handing it to her, "but you should eat first."

She unlocks the screen and her face is bathed in citric glowy lumescence. He wonders when she last called Carlos. "I can't eat," she says, "I'm nauseous all the time. It's like I need to run, run away, you know?"

He knows. He's felt that pang of emergency in the pit of his stomach for twenty years now. The need to fight, to get out there and soldier on; to panic. "Why don't you go visit Carlos?"

"Can't," she says, fiddling with buttons on her phone, "he's in Europe this week. What about Rebecca? We should call Rebecca."

Chris last saw Rebecca shortly after Emma's birth. She was older now, too old; he'd always liked to imagine her as that S.T.A.R.S kid who was too afraid to carry a gun. Now she works for the government as an Assistant Director with the F.B.I. Once again, he struggles to remember how she used to be.

"I'll cut you a deal," says Chris as seriously as he can manage. Jill looks at him, challenges him with her stormcloud eyes. "We can call Rebecca… after you have breakfast."

She throws the phone at his leg. "Fine, Redfield, you drive a hard bargain." And she kisses him suddenly, knocks the breath right out of him at eight am on a Monday morning.

* * *

In Russia, he felt for sure that he was dying. He was cold, so cold, but his body was on fire, burning with the ice white cold snow that hugged their little cabin.

"This is crazy," he said, pacing. They had already burned all of the books they could find. "We'll get frost bite and hypothermia and be of no use to anyone."

"What's the matter Redfield," Jill had said, with her cool voice and her singular raised eyebrow, "afraid of a little chill?"

He held his breath for half a minute, and then breathed it all out in one fluid gulp. Fog clouded around his face. He remembered playing this game with Claire when they were kids, pretending to be dragons. Now, he'd seen too many real life monsters to find any fun in it.

The cabin was wood, with minimal central heating, and had only two rooms into which the entirety of their B.S.A.A squad was crowded. He and Jill had called shotgun on the sofa, and were sharing a scratchy blanket and half a can of soup. In the middle of the room, a flimsy gas fire burned.

He ignored her. He stared into the fire until his eyes hurt, wondering if he could divine the future. The embers crackled and hissed against the icy air, and Jill returned to eating their soup in silence. He continued to ignore her. He was doing that more and more lately – turning away from all the strange little advances she made. After the Mansion Incident they had become a tagalong band of soldiers, privy to a relationship that was exclusive between the two of them. They were more than friends, more than partners, but he still wasn't entirely sure what the hell they were.

"I can't feel my fingers," she said, wiggling them in front of his face for effect. He caught them and pressed them between his own.

"Jesus, Valentine," he exclaimed, "you really are cold."

"I said so, didn't I?" She snatched her hands back and returned to her soup, "We'll need therapy after this all right, big time. Therapy and a million hot water bottles."

He nodded and laughed. Hot water bottles would be freakin brilliant right about now. He went back to staring into the fire, watching it burn through the meagre amount of dry wood they'd gathered earlier on.

"Hey Redfield," said Jill, "how about we huggle together for warmth?" She raised her eyebrow, and he tried his best to ignore her. He tried to think about other things, about the time he'd built his own fire during the Mansion Incident.

It was during a brief moment of quiet, and he and Rebecca were barricaded in one of the dusty old bedrooms, pacing and panting and lifting their guns at the tiniest noise. Rebecca was tired. She had Richard's blood on her face and grime on her medic outfit, but her face lit up when he told her about the fire.

"A fire would be brilliant," she said, beaming at him like he was a hero, "really Chris, great idea."

He nodded, and patted her arm, and got down on his hands and knees to strike his matches together over the sparse scattering of twigs and torn floorboards. Lighting a fire in this old mansion probably wasn't the smartest idea, but hell, there were zombies running riot, Chris figured that the rules of logic no longer applied.

Rebecca actually cheered when the flame lit. The pair of them moved back to sit on the bed, and Chris took his gun out hopefully.

"Only a few bullets left," he said, inspecting it, "I guess I should start using my dagger sometime soon." He didn't relish the thought of having nothing but a few inches of dull steel between himself and a monster.

Rebecca looked at him, looked right through him. "This is where everything changes, isn't it Chris? Nothing will be the same after tonight."

He couldn't think of anything to say or do, except to nod. She was right. Eighteen years old and on her first assignment and probably up way past her usual bedtime, but she was right. "God, I hope Wesker's okay." And Jill, and Barry. He hadn't heard anything from either of them in almost four hours. "I wonder where they are. This place must be huge."

"Do you think Brad will come back for us?" Said Rebecca, looking at the floor.

Chris was doubtful. He'd always been doubtful of Chickenheart, right from the very start. "I hope so."

Rebecca yawned, and knocked her shoulder against his. He looked at her and saw Claire, exactly Rebecca's age down to the month. He was glad Claire wasn't here to see these horrors, he felt sick just imagining the way she'd react in this situation. "Why don't you get some sleep, you much be exhausted?" He was exhausted, right through to the bones.

She stared at him, "seriously? How can I sleep during this?"

"I'll keep an eye on you," he said, and moved towards the fire with his hands out for warmth, "don't worry Rebecca."


	6. Chapter 6

"Statistically speaking, your plan is crap," she said, deadpan. Didn't even miss a beat.

He flicked her arm idly, and mouthed 'shoo' and tried not to kiss her. It was getting harder and harder to do that, these days. The B.S.A.A had more agents than ever, it was two months post-China, and Chris marvelled each and every day that he was still alive, and so was Jill.

"Put your goggles on, Valentine," he insisted, keeping his voice as professional as possible. He was, after all, supposed to be her superior in this situation. She obeyed, but kept a frown of frustration on her face to let him know she wasn't happy.

They stood face to face, and he held a square board of plywood between them. "Now try," he said, and took a few steps back.

She sighed a little, but drew her knife all the same. She wobbled around on the spot for a while before coming to face him, and reaching out hesitantly with the knife. "It's no good Chris – I can't see!"

He laughed. "That's the point. A good agent doesn't need her sense of sight, only above-average intuition."

"This is stupid," she said, fiddling with the blacked-out goggles. She made a few jabs with her knife and missed the board completely.

"It's simple really," he said, "just throw the knife."

"Throw it! But what if I hit you?"

"Try not to."

"But what if I do?"

He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Well, then at least we'll know your aim is just as bad as ever."

* * *

She was immortal. He'd always liked to think that, and imagine that somehow in the middle of all this hell she'd be all right, unscarred. But he'd mapped her bullet-wounds in the half-light; she was beaten and blackened more than anyone. He knew his way around her scars even in the dark, and he found himself drawn to the scarab-marks on her chest. He'd kill them if they took her again.

Once she lay watching him, only half-awake, as he examined her shoulder. Stretching from the base of her neck to her trapezius muscle was a long patch of uneven skin; the poison-scar where she had been bitten by a crazed snake.

"Named Yawn," she whispered as he inspected, and he laughed. How trivial; a giant snake.

"Did we kill him, in the end?" She was more than half asleep now, and he hugged her gently.

"More than once."

"Good," she whispered against his chest, "we can sleep easy, now."

"Yeah," and that in itself was a small miracle.

"They don't bother you, do they?" She says. They are naked in the bath, water slapping around their chins as they lie in the tub, dangerously close to sleep.

"What?" He says, and as his speaks his lips rasp against her wet hair.

"My scars." To prove her point she lifts her arm from the water, and he can see white lesion marks. He can't even hazard a guess as to how she'd got them – Wesker's chains, zombie bites, monster claws – it's anyone's guess.

"Of course not," he says, shocked that she could even suggest it.

She shrugs in his arms, and the water shudders around them. "It's just… I'll bet you didn't imagine me this way, when you pictured me naked. Scarred, you know. Just covered in scars, and ugly."

"Jill Valentine," he says, "you may be a lot of things, but you're not ugly." He sucks her earlobe to prove his point. She tastes of soapy water and harsh shampoo. "Never."

"You're telling me that this –" she points out another scar on her knee, "doesn't bother you? At all?"

He frowns. "Well. It's not that it doesn't bother me… It's just that… You're scarred because you're a hero. We're all scarred, all of us. Inside and out. But you have these all over your body, and they're badges of honor. I don't see imperfections, I just see marks that say 'this is Jill Valentine, the girl who fought back'." He pokes her in the ribs to let her know he's finished.

"Well, when you put it like that…"

* * *

For three years he was adrift, like a sickly starfish lopped in half. He moved in with Claire when he wasn't on a mission, and the two of them ate take-out and watched zombie movies just for kicks.

She told him she was going back to college, and he was glad that one of them had a chance at a normal life. She told him he should move on. He felt sick when she suggested it, because all he wanted to do was tear Wesker limb from limb.

"My fate is sealed," he told her, and she shrugged and returned to her college forms.

"I don't want to have to bury you, too." She said quietly.

* * *

Before his scheduled visit with Claire, Chris goes back to Raccoon City just once, just to see what it's like. He prepares himself for flashbacks and the kind of fear he hasn't felt in decades. He tucks a gun under his jacket, because he can't stand to be there without one.

He arrives just after midday, and there is a smattering of tourists milling around the city limits. The clock tower seems to be the designated memorial-place, because quite a few people have laid flowers, and there are even photographs of the dead pinned to the peeling marble. Twenty years on, the photos look whitewashed and fake.

Chris isn't entirely sure why he came here, especially when he has plans to visit with his sister in a few days. Claire is busy with Sherry, Jill and Emma have a playdate; Chris had a spare few hours and found himself driving east before he knew it.

Feeling foolish and incredibly old, he spends a little while walking up and down the streets. He wasn't sure what he expected, but he's surprised that there isn't some kind of welcoming committee of new wave TerraSave agents, or a helpdesk with pamphlets on how to avoid zombies. Of the few visitors that the place has attracted, nobody seems entirely sure of what exactly happened. He suspects that people are here just for something to pass the time. He's surprised to find that the place almost looks the same as it did twenty years ago, only the bodies are gone. He wonders what Umbrella did with the bodies – burn them?

He lets his feet lead him down familiar paths – his body still has a flesh memory of this place from when it was a living, breathing town, from when he spent his years as a new S.T.A.R.S agent, a big fish in a small town. He finds himself looking at particular places on the sidewalk and thinking _this is where Barry and I found that lucky quarter, this is where Jill downed a whole keg of beer, this is where Brad died and then came back to life_.

"Excuse me, sir?" Says a voice behind him, and somebody grabs his arm suddenly. He whirls around to find himself face to face with a young girl, probably college age. A few other girls stand a little way off, looking embarrassed on her behalf.

"Yes?" Says Chris, impatient.

"I'm sorry, sir, I think I'm mistaken," she trips over her words, going red in the face, "I thought you were someone else. Sorry."

She turns to leave, but he stops her. "No – go on – who did you think I was?"

"It's just that they have photographs in the police station, just down the street, and one of them looks like you. But it can't be, can it? I read that hardly anyone survived the disaster here?" She's young, younger than Sherry, and he can hardly blame her curiosity.

"Of course that can't be me," he says with a forced laugh.

"No," says the girl, "I thought not." And she hurries off to re-join her friends, leaving Chris standing by the side of the road.

He knows the way to the police station, he's always known it. He walks there in five minutes, and finds a little pin board standing in the front yard. He remembers parking his car here every day, and trying to act cool in front of Jill. The girl is right; on the board are newspaper cut outs of himself, Leon, Claire, Sherry, Carlos, Jill, Rebecca, and Barry. Most of them are Raccoon Police Department official photos, taken on their first day of the job. Sherry's is a school photograph; Claire's is a candid of her snapped by the press shortly after news of the incident got out. He finds himself drawn to the photos, to the grainy texture of the paper, to the way in which they are all smiling, unaware. _Sherry sure did wear a lot of pink_… He tries to remember a time when Sherry wasn't angry and twisted, but he can't.

Beneath the photos are a few newspaper clippings about the incident, a few reports from the B.S.A.A, and a short, word-processed account of the events that took place in July 1998. Chris reads it fervently, like he doesn't know the end. The official version of events iis as true as can be expected, and Chris finds himself thankful yet again that Umbrella and their poison is long gone from the world.

Chris turns away from the board, headed for home. He watches the ground beneath his feet as he walks. White concrete, fresh and untried. The city was nuked after Claire and Leon escaped, burnt to oblivion in an instant. When it was rebuilt fresh stones were laid on top, mimicking the city in painstaking detail. Chris treads down old paths, seeing the city as it used to be, blood-stained and burned down. He finds himself thinking that no matter how many new layers of concrete are poured on top of the ground, this city will always be burnt. Always be scarred. Always be the place he used to sit in his one-roomed apartment, bored and underpaid, wishing for something better.

He thinks about Jill, about Emma, and he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he got his wish after all.


	7. Chapter 7

**Hi everyone, sorry this took so long, I've been ill. I hope you all enjoy this chapter!**

* * *

That night, he dreams again. He was in the airport in D.C, dragging Jill's neon pink suitcases around the arrivals lounge. She was in the bathroom and he was keeping watch, like a tiger in a trap. It all felt too much, too soon, even though they travelled first class and didn't make eye contact with anyone, even though Josh went over the itinerary a thousand times, even though four different doctors gave Jill the all clear.

He was waiting for the penny to drop, for someone in a Wesker-mask to come sweeping in and take her back to hell, but she was cool in her B.S.A.A standard issue slacks, hair dyed brown again, full of jokes and _dammit Chris you can't follow me to the bathroom. _

He regretted the whole let's-grab-a-cab idea. It seemed too casual now, too dangerous. He wanted to call Claire, but he knew Jill would think he'd given up and called the cavalry. She wouldn't be too far off, because he was pacing like a madman, and the airport started to look distinctly Spencer Estate-like.

* * *

"Raccoon City incident, huh?"

"I'm sorry, what?" Chris looked up, unsure whether or not the receptionist had actually spoken.

She shrugged, and spoke again. "I said the Raccoon City incident. It's an interesting case."

He drummed his feet on the floor, checking the clock for the fifteenth time that hour. It was still only half four, there was still another half hour to go… "I'm sure it is."

"Are you presenting a case?" The receptionist asked, interested. He could hardly blame her; Raccoon's destruction was probably the most interesting thing that had happened in her working career.

Chris shook his head, tried not to feel sick. "No, I'm just… here with my family." He pointed to the empty seats beside him, occupied by Claire's jacket, Jill's handbag, Sherry's battered teddy bear.

"Oh," said the receptionist, and returned to tapping away at her computer.

Chris sighed, and checked the time again. He was beginning to feel that all F.B.I offices looked the same, gray and flat and stuck in a time warp in which an hour seemed to last all day. It was January 1999, and the F.B.I had finally managed to round up the remaining Raccoon City survivors for a routine debriefing in the office. Leon had presented his case shortly before signing on as a government agent, and Sherry had finally been released from protective custody. All the loose ends were being tied up.

The door opened suddenly, and out walked Sherry. She looked healthier than he'd seen her in weeks, but still too pale, and she had been visibly crying. She hurried to her seat beside Chris, and jammed the bear against her chest.

"How did it go?" Chris asked, dumbly. He was still unsure how to act around Sherry; he'd never been particularly good with children.

She shrugged. "Okay, I guess."

"You guess?"

"Yeah. They asked questions, you know, about my mom and my dad and if I knew anything about their work. You know. The usual stuff. They still want to talk to Claire and Jill."

Chris nodded. He figured the Assistant Director had sent Sherry out early so he could discuss the gritty details without worrying about a minor. He laughed to himself: Sherry had seen more horrors than most F.B.I agents could even imagine.

"Chris?" Said Sherry. "Is Mr Wesker really dead?"

He thought about the way the mansion had blown up as they were flying away, about the way he and Claire had left Wesker on Rockfort Island, standing in the cross fired. Wesker had a habit of surviving such things. He looked at Sherry. "I don't know," he said, "but I don't think you have to worry about him anymore Sherry."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The hard part is over now, kiddo."

* * *

He watches her eat. Watches her sleep. Watches her walk barefoot with a limp and look over her shoulder like she's scared someone will sneak up behind her with a Beretta.

He listens to her talk for hours on end about Wesker, still Wesker after all these years, about the precise tilt to his voice and the way he would keep his eyes on her during training exercises. He listens to her talk about the leatherette smell of the sleep chambers, the unaccustomed hissing of the lab's machinery when the computers woke up every morning. The floor was bright white checked with fool's gold; she can recall it even now.

He hears her tell the stories so many times he can recount them word for word, the way she felt the parasitic virus clinging bodily to her cells, felt it integrating and multiplying inside her bloodstream; she felt it like a high. She tells it with the rhythmic precision of one who has nightmares every night.

He tells her that she's saved the world, that she's saved him, that she can rest easy now. She's a china doll barely held together; a robot strung up on bailing wire, she's a mannequin of equal parts. She's a jar head, bruised around the edges, and she sure as hell doesn't need another fight on her hands.

* * *

**I'm uploading the next part now, two chapters at once! :D**


	8. Chapter 8

**Ok, I _really_ like this chapter, it makes me happy, and nostalgic!**

* * *

It was July 4th 1998, and the whole gang were celebrating Independence Day. Brad had got hold of some Japanese fireworks, and they were crowded in the parking lot of R.P.D, watching the sky catch fire.

Everything was warm, slow-motion happiness. Chris had an armful of beer, and then somebody stomped in front of him wearing ridiculous boots and a very short skirt. It was Valentine, the newest recruit, and he rolled his eyes, wondering who the hell invited a woman to hang with the guys.

"So guess what," she drawled, wrestling a beer bottle from him and opening it on her belt. _Damn_.

"What?" He huffed, more drunk than he'd like to admit.

"You and I are both on Alpha team, now."

"That sucks," he watched a maze of color burst through the sky, and the surrounding S.T.A.R.S members cheered, "nothing interesting ever happens to Alpha team."

Three hours later and everything reeked of charcoal, and Joseph was the only one sober, so he drew the short straw to drive them out of the city limits, because somebody caught wind of a major fireworks display happening there.

Chris called shotgun, and dived in through the passenger side window. Jill piled in with Brad and Forrest, and Barry was last.

"Where to, comrades?" Joseph yelled over the collected sounds of their drunken celebrations.

They all shouted out different destinations and Chris, sobering himself somewhat, pulled out a map and pointed to the green belt around the city, the area reserved for grand mansions. "Drive," he said wisely, and leant his head back against the seat.

Either side of Jill, Brad and Forrest were arguing. Chris turns 180 in his seat and, still swaying, began to strike up a bravado conversation with her. He hoped he didn't look too pathetic, stone drunk and hitting on his new best friend.

"I love everyone," yelled Barry, who had been on the vodka all night. Joseph regarded him with deep pity and passed him a cigarette.

"Are we nearly there yet?" Brad said sharply, ignoring Forrest's continued arguing, and everyone reached over to lay a slap on him.

"Quiet down Chickenheart," Snickered Joseph, "this city is goddamned huge, all right? I'm driving as fast as I can, July 4th sure brings out the nutjobs." He gestured to the road ahead, where Chris could see a drunken circle of college kids spilling out into the street. He was reminded suddenly of Claire, and hoped she wasn't as drunk as he was. "They're like zombies, look at 'em!" Joseph stuck a middle finger up at the gang of kids as they drove past.

Chris returned his attention to Jill. He wanted to say something along the lines of 'will you be my Valentine?' but had a sinking feeling that that would be unwise, and that he and Jill had built up too much of a rapport tonight for him to ruin it with cheesy pick-up lines.

Jill met his eyes and, as drunk as him, grinned cheerily. She had a beer bottle in her hand, and gave it to Chris. He took a drink, as Joseph announced that they had arrived, and the S.T.A.R.S members clambered to get out the car. In the midst of the fray, Jill took Chris's hand and, filled with newfound confidence, he slipped an arm around her shoulders.

"Hey guys," he shouted at his friends, "let's go see some fireworks."

* * *

He sits in Emma's bedroom each night, reading from a book of fairy tales. He teaches her about knights and princesses, about heroes, and brave little girls who save the world from monsters. He wonders if it's too soon to teach her how to shoot.

Jill lies on the bed beside their daughter, with her arms around the girl and her feet in Chris's lap. Emma curls a finger around Jill's long dark hair as she steadily falls asleep to the sound of Chris's reading.

"Again Daddy," says Emma when he reaches the end. She's so close to sleep her voice sounds weak, but he flips back to the beginning anyway.

By the time he finishes the story for a second time, Jill is asleep too. He puts the book on the shelf and backs out of the room.

In the kitchen, Claire and Sherry are sharing a bottle of wine and talking animatedly.

"He did what?" Claire laughs, and Chris motions for her to keep her voice down.

"Jill's asleep," he whispers, and Claire nods apologetically.

Sherry holds back a giggle. "He sent me five dozen red roses. By FedEx."

Chris raises an eyebrow and pours himself a glass of wine. He hasn't seen much of Jake since China, but the kid sure made an impression on Sherry.

"My god," says Claire, "that's kind of romantic."

"Kind of?" Laughs Sherry, "I don't know, I think it's some European tradition, he's very old fashioned like that."

"Speaking of Jake, when is he going to make an honest woman of you?" Chris says, and Sherry hits him lightly on the arm.

"Don't start that, Chris, we're not all marriage-material. And anyway, I barely see him these days."

Chris raises an eyebrow at her. "You just let me know when I need to knock some sense into him," and he grins to show her he's joking. He is joking, mostly, but he feels unbearably protective over her, and she's more his daughter than she ever was Birkin's.

Jill appears at the door, stretching and looking lost. "I can't believe you let me fall asleep like that," she collapses at the table, and lets Claire pour her a glass of wine.

Chris makes a sad face and kisses her. "You looked cute."

They stay up past midnight, talking and drinking and making jokes about zombies. They do this often, just the four of them, sitting together and sharing long silences in which they look from one to the other and find themselves grateful that if any city was going to go to hell, it was theirs.


End file.
